Evan Booth: Jittery MacGyver: Lessons Learned from Building a Bionic Hand out of a Coffee Maker

Over the next few weeks we’re going to announce the 44CON talks and workshops. Don’t forget to get your tickets!

Our next announcement is Evan Booth – Jittery MacGyver: Lessons Learned from Building a Bionic Hand out of a Coffee Maker

In May of 2015, it was estimated that a pod-based coffee maker could be found in nearly one in three American homes. Despite the continued popularity of these single-cup coffee conjurers at home as well as in the workplace, it has become clear that these devices are not impervious to mechanical and/or electrical failure. It was this intersection of extremely prevalent hardware and relatively short lifespan that prompted me to begin exploring the upper limits of what could be created by repurposing one of the most popular pod-based machines: the Keurig.In this session, we will walk through some real-world examples of “MacGyver”-style creative problem-solving, we’ll go hands on (yes, pun intended) with stuff made from repurposed Keurigs, and finally, I’ll reflect on lessons learned from looking for potential in things most people deem common and unremarkable.

Evan Booth loves to build stuff out of other stuff. As an engineer for Skookum, a full service software development company in Charlotte, North Carolina, he works to solve a variety of business problems through the creative use of technology. As a human for Earth, he tends to break things for curiosity’s sake.

Throughout 2013 and into 2014, in an effort to highlight hypocrisy and “security theater” brought about by the TSA, through a research project called “Terminal Cornucopia,” Evan created an arsenal ranging from simple, melee weapons to reloadable firearms to remotely-triggered incendiary suitcases—all solely comprised of items that anyone can purchase inside most airport terminals *after* the security checkpoint.

Given the right ingredients, a big cardboard box can be a time machine, spaceship, minecart, or a telephone booth that only calls people named “Steve” who live in the future.